Marathon Hits Wall Amid Criticism

By

Matthew Futterman,

Michael Howard Saul and

Andrew Grossman

Updated Nov. 4, 2012 12:21 p.m. ET

Amid mounting public pressure, Mayor
Michael Bloomberg
on Friday canceled plans to host the New York City Marathon this weekend, saying it had become a divisive issue that was distracting the city from efforts to recover from superstorm Sandy.

Mr. Bloomberg made the afternoon announcement in a joint statement with New York Road Runners Chief Executive
Mary Wittenberg.

ENLARGE

A worker at the finish line on Friday before the marathon was canceled.
Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency

The decision came just hours after Mr. Bloomberg reiterated a position he had held for days: the race should be held Sunday as a sign of resilience and because it generates some $340 million in economic activity.

But that was met with a growing chorus of dissenters, including top city officials, who said the marathon would tax city resources at a crucial time. The spectacle of the marathon—a celebratory, citywide event—also struck many as unseemly when at least 41 people had died, including a brother and sister who were found on Staten Island on Friday after staying home to protect their pets, police said.

Hundreds of joggers, many wearing New York City Marathon shirts, ran loops around Central Park in what seemed to be a DIY version of the race that was canceled due to superstorm Sandy. Laura Landro reports via #WorldStream. Photo: Associated Press.

Over 47,000 runners were expected to run in New York on Sunday. After first insisting that the marathon would go on, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the race's cancelation. Many runners voiced mixed reactions. Photo: Associated Press.

The race wouldn't be rescheduled, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson said.

Earlier, in an effort to salvage the race, Ms. Wittenberg had attempted to recast it as a "Race to Recovery" highlighted by a fundraising drive to support relief efforts. Already those efforts had raised $1.1 million from the Rudin family, a longtime sponsor of the marathon, a $1 million commitment from the Road Runners, $500,000 from ING, the event's title sponsor, and what would likely have been hundreds of thousands more from runners who were asked to donate to recovery efforts.

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But shortly after the midday Friday news conference where Mr. Bloomberg said the marathon would go on, aides "began having conversations about options" for canceling the event, a city official said. The mayor believed the city had the manpower to host the race without harming recovery efforts but agreed the issue had become too divisive, the official said.

City Hall officials and the marathon's organizers discussed a number of alternatives, including holding a 10-mile run in Manhattan and moving the traditional start of the race out of Staten Island. But in the end, the mayor didn't believe any of the options would quash criticism.

One person familiar with the matter said the mayor was aware of the criticism. But "it was definitely his senior staff" telling him the event couldn't move forward that led to the decision.

"The mayor did not believe that would bring the race back to being what everyone wants it to be," said one person familiar with his thinking.

"It is with an especially heavy heart that we're here to say there will not be a 2012 New York marathon," a shaken-looking Ms. Wittenberg said at an evening news conference. Serious thought was also given to holding an elite race, said Mr. Wolfsohn.

Runners will be offered spots in next year's race or in the New York City half-marathon in March. It will mark the first time the marathon won't be run since it started in 1970.

In recent days, calls to cancel the marathon had gained steam on social media. On
Facebook
,
the pages "Boycott the 2012 NYC Marathon" and "Cancel the NYC 2012 Marathon" received tens of thousands of clicks of support. Online petitions also gained thousands of signatures.

The online movement heaped guilt upon tormented runners. Before the announcement was made. "I've had to stop reading Twitter and Facebook because there are so many nasty comments," said Ursula Cary, who was set to run her first marathon on Sunday.

The decision throws into turmoil the plans of some 20,000 foreign runners who have been descending on the city all week to run in the event—the biggest of its kind—that travels through all five boroughs.

News of the cancellation disappointed hundreds of runners in line to retrieve their bib numbers at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Midtown.

Emily Piacquadio stayed in line despite receiving a call from a friend saying the race was off. She estimates she spent close to $700 on her journey here from St. Paul, Minn. As for why she was still waiting she said, "I still want my T-shirt," she said.

Pablo Corona and Josh Weintraub traveled to the race from Atlanta. They were milling about the Javits Center deciding what to do. "I looked into running the Savannah Marathon tomorrow morning," Mr. Corona said. "But the flight out of here is at 8 p.m. and the race is at 7 a.m."

Mr. Weintraub said the timing of the decision at this point in the week was "unreal." But when he heard about police recovering the bodies of two children killed in Staten Island during the storm, he said, "I knew this couldn't go on."

Organizers have spent all week pushing ahead with plans, building viewing stands and the massive starting-line village on Staten Island. But the race became a flashpoint in the recovery, and pressure to cancel the race built throughout Friday, with likely mayoral candidates year calling for its cancellation, as well as several others from ravaged areas in Queens and Staten Island.

City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn said in a statement that holding the marathon "is not a decision I would have made." Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio were also among those calling for the marathon to be postponed or cancelled,

Patrick J. Lynch
,
president of the police officers' union and an occasional adversary of Mr. Bloomberg's, said staffing was simply too low, with many members of the department suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy, to hold the marathon. "We are spread far too thin fighting crime, terrorism and the effects of this disaster," Mr. Lynch said in a statement.

City Council Member Jimmy Oddo, whose Staten Island district was hit hard by the storm, said city workers had already been shifting their attention to the marathon route.

"If there is a police officer who is standing behind a barricade watching runners go by from Italy and Ethiopia, I would like to have that police officer at intersections on Staten Island where there still aren't working traffic lights," Mr. Oddo said.

Indeed the NYRR and its marathon are well known for the care and feeding of their runners, with a volunteer force 8,000 strong.

Increasingly, providing support for runners while others living nearby lack basic comforts was becoming a public-relations disaster. The NYRR day says it distribute more than 32,000 gallons of energy drink, and 54,000 finisher recovery bags filled with fruit, bottled water, protein bars and other goodies on marathon day. The starting line in Staten Island is equipped with 93,600 bottles of water, more than 30,000 power bars and fruit smoothies, and 45,000 cups of coffee.

NYRR moved Friday to shift its resources, including thousands of tents and portable toilets to the recovery efforts.

Ryan Lamppa, a researcher for Running USA, said the move is unprecedented in marathon history. Smaller marathons have been canceled due to heat, and large ones have been stopped in the middle, also because of heat concerns, but no major marathon of this magnitude has been canceled, "This is unchartered territory," Mr. Lampa said.

The marathon would have inevitably caused disruptions. It requires closing the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge for hours, halting the flow of traffic between Brooklyn and Staten Island for hours. Then, runners would have headed up Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, shutting off access to its numerous gas stations.

City crews prepped the road along the marathon path on Bedford Avenue through the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Williamsburg and Greenpoint sections of Brooklyn Friday afternoon. The famous blue line that runners follow from the start to the finish had also recently been painted along the route.

"Any inconveniences the cancellation causes for me or the thousands of runners who trained and traveled for this race pales in comparison to the challenges faced by people in NYC and its vicinity in the aftermath of Sandy," U.S. Olympic marathoner Meb Keflezighi said.

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